September 21, 2017 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Age of Mechanical Calculating Machines
Just to make you feel a slightly more
insignificant than you would usually feel, Pascal invented his calculating
machine when he was just a youth of nineteen.
You may not be able to guess the motivation
for his invention.
He was spurred to develop such a
calculating machine as he was unable to digest the pain his father would
inflict upon himself in carrying out tedious calculations manually for tax
purposes in Rouen.
In his final days, Pascal began to write
down his theological beliefs in what is considered to be supremely elegant
French prose.
It remained incomplete with his premature death
in 1662 (age of 39) and which posthumously was collected together in a form of
book and named Pensées which translates as “Thoughts”.
This work is mostly theological and
philosophical but it seems that in this work he had also described his
arithmetic calculator Pascaline.
It is truly the attribute of his genius
that Pascal could actually convert the idea of his calculating machine into an
actual device that he even managed to sell.
Using spoked metal wheel dials, gears and
springs he devised this machine that could not only add and subtract, but also
had the carry mechanism that allowed 1 to be added to 9 on one dial and when it
changed from 9 to 0, carries 1 to the next dial.
The subtraction operation involves a
fascinating technique known as 9’s complement which I will not go into.
Multiplication and division could be done
indirectly through repeated addition and subtraction.
It is an incredibly sophisticated machine
even for today’s time if you carefully consider the mechanical engineering
required to make the sophisticated parts and join them together.
Leibniz did not have the good fortune of
either meeting or interacting with Pascal as he was just 16 when Pascal passed
away.
Yet the Pascaline was enough to inspire
this brilliant mind.
He wanted to expand the machine so that it
could directly perform all the four mathematical operations.
It took him more than 20 years to
eventually create such a calculating machine that now goes by the name of
stepped reckoner.
I would not like to go too much into the
fine details of mechanical workings of these machines, interesting as it is,
since that is not pertinent to our story theme.
The point is that in that century of rapid
inventions of mechanical calculating machines, there also arose a totally new
thought in the mind of Leibniz.
In his mind he dreamt of a machine that
could, by manipulating symbols, would be able to determine truth value of
mathematical statements.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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